Republicans, Debating, Not As A Team

(Before the titular stuff, mad props to Roger Cohen for his concise, timely defense of secularism in today's NYTimes.)

Ahem.

Props to Ron Paul for saying, in the Republican debates last night:

"We [Americans] maintain an empire which we can't afford."

His answer to budgetary questions, unlike the other candidates', made sense; he recognized that America's attempts to police the world and bully oil-producing nations not only isn't helping us, it's costing us two arms, three legs, and part of a pelvis.

And when asked what he would do in his first year in office:

"We would threaten nobody." Word.

Also, not to be overlooked, Ron Paul on trade:

"It's time we changed our attitude about Cuba."

Mitt Romney had this to say about taxes:

"I don't stay awake at night worrying about the taxes that rich people are paying."

Of course, he followed up by calling for tax-cuts, but at least not rich-people tax-cuts.

Rudy didn't think a failing economy was as big a deal as "Islamic terrorism," which has certainly been the reason behind all my money woes. If only Al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia would stop messing with our housing market and vitiating the middle class... Those rascals.

Fred Thompson was the most frustrating candidate, refusing at first to answer a simple yes or no question about whether or not global climate change was a serious threat caused by humans. (Of course, the moderator should have added "caused in part by humans," or something to that effect - "certainly not helped by human pollution," etc.)

Alan Keyes declined to talk about the environment, instead attacking his opponents and saying America should reduce "hot air" (from politicians); Thompson then - I don't know why, exactly, perhaps in a fit of Dada - said he "agreed with Alan Keyes's position on global warming." Which was cute, but meant he never actually addressed our warming, tidal wave-wracked globe.

Tom Tancredo and Mike Huckabee were both weak on green, the former saying he doesn't believe in mandates. (I.e., simply because the vast majority of us don't want to live in a warm, wet, smoky, landless swamp in a few hundred years, that doesn't mean Tancredo [had anyone heard of him before last night?] and his lizard-people should listen to us.)

Huckabee was quite simply weak. Instead of espousing a coherent policy on/acknowledgment of energy emissions, oil production, the car industry, etc., the Huckster said the U.S. government is the world's biggest energy-user and should therefore be cut down to size, which makes sense most if you're talking - like the Dems (minus Hillary) and Ron Paul - about reducing the U.S. war-machine.

But Huckabee had already said defense was one of three primary features of the vital modern state (including food and oil); he literally called for the U.S. to be able to make its own "tanks, airplanes, bullets, and bombs." Sheesh.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but outsourcing the making of our tanks has never been the issue, no? We're not losing any wars (say, the war against religious extremism, here and abroad) due to lack of/shoddy manufacturing of tanks.

Anyway, Chuck Norris aside, Huckabee is not inspiring.

Duncan Hunter won the G.W.B. Education Award of the evening, however: When asked about, well, education, he said, "Three words: Jaime Escalante and inspiration." Those are four words, Dunk. (You just got slammed.) [Sorry, bad pun.]

No mention of gay rights.

But to bookend:

The whole thing - the gyre of history - turns on this question of religiosity. When asked about "values" (what a terrible reduction/conflation of "metaphysics," "ethics," and "morals"), or in Keyes's case when asked anything, the candidates focused on themselves instead of on the whole of the not necessarily white, not necessarily Christian whole of America.

Instead of saying "church and state are separate; you can be a Muslim-American, a Christian-American, a Buddhist-American, a Satanist-American, an atheist-American, etc.," or anything even remotely similar, they spent their precious seconds trying to out-faith one another.

Need we be reminded? Ours is not a country of "faith," but of reason and individuality: Reason rules the government; individuals are then free to be as faith-y or faithless as they like.

If the government were, say, Buddhist, the Catholics might get mad; if the government were Catholic, the Lutherans might throw a fit, and so on. It's a balancing act wherein the fulcrum is an absence - an absence of a state faith. In fact, it's an absence of any metaphysical principle whatsoever.

"The universe exists and we exist in it" is pretty much the only metaphysical proposition the Framers left us. Some very severe atheists might even take issue with that, but I think 99.999% of Americans can say that, yes, the universe somehow exists.

(Yes, there's the "Creator" bit in the Declaration of Independence, but look at it in context - "endowed by their Creator" is just Deist slang for "alive." Doesn't go into detail about who that Creator is or in what sort of metaphysical hooptie he cruises through time-space.

Full breakdown: Constitution: 0 "God"s, 0 "Creator/created"s; Dec.o.Ind.: 1 "God," 1 "Creator," 1 "created.")

Anyway, I try to take Republicans seriously, as seriously as cancer and good hygiene (both of which, I think, we should consider very seriously), but I just don't get the problem with separating church and state. Seems like a tidy, no-hassle solution to an otherwise impossible problem.

Newest dream-team: Colbert/Bell Hooks '08.

Fear and Interpretation

Thinking back on the reading tonight, it strikes me how much of the detainees' poetry seems to stem from confusion as often as outrage. Again and again, Allah is invoked not bitterly, but almost wistfully: The poet doesn't need to ask Allah to destroy the unjust; the poet wants God to explain to his family that the disorder created by those who fight "a war for peace" will be made ordered again.

This leads me to an article by Akbar Ganji on women's rights in Iran, published in the most recent Boston Review.

Ganji's argument is against the unequal treatment of women in modern Iran, which is worth several posts of its own. But he touches upon a bigger, more overarching point about Islam and rationality: Various important Muslim thinkers, from the Ayatollah Khomeini way back to al-Ghazali - thinkers both conservative and radical - have pointed out that the most important aspect of Islam isn't the following of any specific rule whatsoever, it's just belief in the merciful God.

Said another way, generalized even further out from Islam, the most important aspect of a religion - of any ideal - is the spirit behind it, not the specific methods by which that spirit is manifested in the world.

Take America's war on terror. Like George Bush and the wardens of Guantánamo, I am against Jihadi suicide bombers, against Osama Bin-Laden, against kidnappers. The spirit - protect life - is the same. But the methods differ. Progressives refer to the law, to rational arguments against torture, while Bush and his cronies maintain a strict, Jihadi-like focus on a ghostly version of efficiency. If they think torture is efficient, torture is in, even if it violates the spirit itself. The methods get ahead of the reason behind them, the reason for using them - the methods eat their own collective tail.

Thinking about the dichotomy between spirit (compassion, mercy, reason) and method (torture, kidnapping, secrecy, willful ignoring of law, lack of respect for others' traditions), the methodological links between the Jihadis and the anti-Jihadis blur the two categories. An Orwellian, frightening state of mind.

Faith and Discourse

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes today on the lack of moderate Muslim voices following tragedies caused by strict interpretations of Muslim law. She opens with this brain-blendingly vile quote from the Qur'an: "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. (24:2)"

On the same day, we can read a hundred articles, both pro-but-really-con and just con, about Mitt Romney's faith and how deeply it informs his identity as an American and a politician. (Oh, and we find updates, lots of updates).

David Brooks says "[Romney] argued that the religious have a common enemy: the counter-religion of secularism," then goes on to lambaste Romney for uniting religions that are just separate, if you really think about it; Brooks even calls this unity New Age-y.

In a way, that makes Romney's faith more appealing: If a dedicated Mormon can respect other faiths, then why can't Brooks and other "centrist social conservatives" (or whatever he/they call himself/themselves)?

The sheer dumbfoundedness of Brooks on secularism or Hitchens on faith lumps those very different writers into a sort of category, opposite to Ali and (in the most generous sense, as per Brooks's article) Romney. The question (for everyone, esp. pres. cand.s) isn't, "do you have faith or not?" The question is, "can you talk with those who do - and don't?"

That said, of course Romney's admitting that his faith influences his politics so greatly is both unsurprising and hugely annoying. (BTW, found a shrill, also annoying, but very well-designed site challenging Mormonism and Romney - challenging in general.)

That's why I think a Pastafarian should run for president in 08. Just sayin.

Marvelous Thoughts About... Thought

Dan Dennett is somewhat of a cranky old dude, and not as brilliant a writer as Laing or Jaynes or B. Russell - but he kicks ass on video. He freaks out about Pointillism, which he pronounces in a very funny faux-Gallic way, and he huffs and breathes heavily, but you can't miss this video, it's dope. Even if my boi Dylan isn't into him - I'd hug the dude. Check out Consciousness Explained for more.

Unorthodox And Unafraid

Consider the case of the young atheist:

He loans a friend a book. Then the boys' school administrators freak out because, in loaning another student a book about religion, the atheist somehow violated the "establishment clause."

Funny.

The kid has a great blog, and he tells his story much better than I could.

(His reading list is very good, by the by, if heavy on the R. Dawkins and Nietzche. But give him a break, he's young.)

I'm quite glad there are others in the world who support free thought. Actually, I just wrote a Sir Salman Rushdie tribute for Wishtank which veers off into a discussion about why we should never limit language/thought/questioning.

Basically, telling kids they can't question their faith is as ineffective as it is immoral. The kids--all of them, bible-thumpers, young Saudis bound for the Madrasah, or even little Dawkinses who think themselves Brights but have never really asked the Hard Questions about existence, consciousness, etc.--are going to find out that others don't necessarily agree with them.

And then they will probably blog about their findings. O Internet...

And a little dance couldn't hurt either....

There is a massive drought in Alabama. The National Weather Service has called it the worst in decades. But the Governor there, Gov. Bob Riley, has a solution - prayer! Yes, folks, the Governor asked all Alabamians (Alabamists?) to pull together and pray for rain. That should do it.

The Wonder of SPACE JESUS

Zee Germans don't like Tom Cruise's religion, and I'm not sure I like HisHolySpace, a MySpace for Christians.

For one, MySpace does not group your profiles by gender; HisHolySpace does. (Though here females are "the women who serve him" and males are "the men who serve him," with an unexplained third category, "seekers of the truth.")

I am most wary of the site's "mission statement," a term usually de-formalized on the internet as "about" or "about us." Here's what I'm worried about (emphasis mine):

Like-minded: means to “Think the same way” this exhortation is not optional or obscure but is repeated throughout the NT (cf. Rom 15:5; 1Cor. 1:10; 2Cor. 13:11-13)

Meaning you're with us or the terrorists. Good guys or bad guys. Christ's personal S.W.A.T. team or the demons, left behind after the Rapture.

I gotta admit, though - they got enthusiasm.

Banner at the bottom of a random page within HisHolySpace reads: "Stop Satan NOW!"

Group I would join if I were Christian: "Jesus' Disciples for SPACE EXPLORATION!"

Of course, other god groups have their own sites (www.muslimspace.com, www.naseeb.com, www.muslimsocial.com, www.shmooze.com, www.koolanoo.com, etc.), and a study could be made as to how severely different religious factionas EMPHASIZE THE ENDS OF THEIR SENTENCES.

One WONDERS...

Tony, Tony, Tony

Is Tony Blair converting to Catholicism? (More about this sparklingly unimportant issue here.)

The writer wonders why anyone converts to the Old Skygod Religions these days... They don't like my gay friends, for one.

There are alternatives. Yoism's been around for a while, and some former mainstreamers have taken note, forming Open Source Judaism, which is an intriguing a concept with a seemingly decrepit website.

Forgetting post-prime ministerial-conversion woes, one wonders how different this country will be when its rulers cease to be primarily Episcopalian WASPs, not that the Kennedy or Kerry Catholics are all that different.

If Mos Def (or Lupe Fiasco) isn't president at some point in my lifetime, I'm going to be one cranky, cranky ghost. That's all I'm sayin.

The Race Changes; The Race Remains The Same

Bloomberg quits the GOP, and my ex-republican friend starts sending me happy emails about how the guy represents the center and is going to turn water into freedom nuggets. Ba-humbug. The old white guys are still the old white guys; War is still the state religion of America.

Obama's the real deal, as say I and some at The Nation. My ex-republican friend says Obama's not qualified, not a strong enough leader. Bullshit. The man's been leading the unofficial Fuck No We Don't Want To Go To War With No Fucking Iraqis party since Day One.

And Obama--like our own Lear deBessonet, like Hitchens, like me--believes you can't just ignore religion, religiosity, and spirituality in America.

By the by, here's an interesting study on religion and intelligence, and here's another one.

I wonder if some centrist, stubbornly faithful parallel exists between politics and religion; i.e., if the vast majority of Americans want to believe in both a moral, anthropomorphic, skyey God as well as an upright, well-qualified, having-it-both-ways (conservative-and-liberal, or so-seeming) President or Presidential candidate.

Is Bloomberg the right blend of New York no-bullshit-git-R-done-pro-environment-pro-War and popular? Will his Perotism detract from my Obama/Mos Def ticket's chances at success? WILL WE EVER HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO IS NOT A YALIE WITH A BAD HAIRCUT?

Stay tuned...

C. Hitchens, when not rabid, says some smart things

Though he also makes a lot of strange, awkward comparisons. Regarding his Quaker/Bin Laden remark, let me just point out that a Quaker is more like a Sufi, not a radical jihadi like Bin Laden. All religions have peaceful mystics as well as angry radicals. (Except the Church of the Subgenius, which has only angry mystics.)

Anyway, read a fascinating Hitchens interview with TruthDig.

It's Not Often That I Agree With Republican Senator Sam Brownback About Religion...

Compared to Fred Thompson (boo! hiss!) et al, this man is a shining beacon of good thought. He has considered his position, and he states his case well. I agree with him:

There is no reason that people of faith cannot or should not use reason and the scientific method as much as possible.

Science does not purport to verify or dismiss claims about God -- or any claims that cannot be addressed by hypothesis and experiment.

Likewise, the existence of God does not disprove evolution; if God exists, perhaps he created evolution. We can't know.

Sam goes off at the end about man being created in the "image" of something, and I tend to think that that idea, too, is untestable and unprovable, and probably not all that important.

After all, we are here, now, and we can create sweet robots in our own image.

More from Sam:

May 31, 2007, Op-Ed Contributor, "What I Think About Evolution," By SAM BROWNBACK:

IN our sound-bite political culture, it is unrealistic to expect that every complicated issue will be addressed with the nuance or subtlety it deserves. So I suppose I should not have been surprised earlier this month when, during the first Republican presidential debate, the candidates on stage were asked to raise their hands if they did not “believe” in evolution. As one of those who raised his hand, I think it would be helpful to discuss the issue in a bit more detail and with the seriousness it demands.

The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.

The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart.

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations — go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology.

The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident. That being the case, many believers — myself included — reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality.

Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation — and indeed life today — is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

Biologists will have their debates about man’s origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science continues to explore the details of man’s origin, faith can do its part as well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our understanding of the human person.

The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth that must be safeguarded. I am wary of any theory that seeks to undermine man’s essential dignity and unique and intended place in the cosmos. I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose.

While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

Without hesitation, I am happy to raise my hand to that.

Sam Brownback is a Republican senator from Kansas.

See my THAT'S PLENTY post about the Creationist museum >>

Wowee-Wow: Another Anti-Gay Religious Leader, I R Surprised

From the Times:

The archbishop of Canterbury sent out more than 800 invitations yesterday to a once-a-decade global gathering of Anglican bishops. But he did not invite the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and the bishop in Virginia who heads a conservative cluster of disaffected American churches affiliated with the archbishop of Nigeria.

The exclusions offended liberals and conservatives in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has been threatened by schism since the election in 2003 of the bishop of New Hampshire, V. Gene Robinson, who lives with his gay partner.

...Bishop Robinson said he was extremely disappointed at his exclusion and asked in a statement, “At a time when the Anglican Communion is calling for a ‘listening process’ on the issue of homosexuality, how does it make sense to exclude gay and lesbian people from the discussion?”

LOL, I think I'm going to call up Hezbollah to hold a Quorum On Healing Society In Lebanon and not invite any secular Muslims, Christians, or Druze. Post-Falwell / pre-fixin stuff.

let's all stop throwing rocks! (literally and figuratively)

Joss Whedon is a feminist man, writing about the "honor killing" of seventeen year old Dua Khalil in Kurdistan and the deeply disturbing resemblance it bears to the trailer for a new film in the US, “Captivity” (or vice versa).

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

Oh my f%$^ing God!

I'm sorry to blaspheme on the occasion of the righteous death of Jerry Falwell (yeah, I said that right). I hesitated exactly one day to mark his passing. It may be unChristian to speak ill of the dead, but I think Jesus is on my side on this one. Jerry Falwell was a hateful bigot and there was absolutely nothing Christian about him. It has amazed me in the past couple of days how people on 'my' side of the political spectrum want to 'praise' the reverend for his 'faith' and 'conviction'. Even Al Sharpton had kind words to say about that fat prick, and that really pisses me off. Maybe Al forgets the early 80's when good ol' Jerry was begging his congegation to buy krugerrands to help prop up PW Botha's apartheid government. Or how he blamed Al, and me, and you, for 9/11. But perhaps his biggest crime, one that sadly just keeps on giving, is the inspiration he gave to bloodthirsty sickos like Ann Coulter. Here is Ann, today, in her column's eulogy of Larry Flynt's favorite motherfucker:

I note that in Falwell’s list of Americans he blamed for ejecting God from public life, only the blacks got a qualifier. Falwell referred to blacks who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle.

No Christian minister is going to preach that being a Negro is godly behavior, but Falwell didn’t add any limiting qualifications to his condemnation of feminists, the ACLU or People for the American Way.

There have always been colored people — even in the prelapsarian ’50s that Jerry Falwell and I would like to return to, when God protected America from everything but ourselves.

What Falwell was referring to are the black activists — the ones who kept sitting at lunch counters where they clearly weren’t welcome, blamed Wallace for segregation, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about “busing.”

Don't rest in peace, Jerry. Instead, enjoy the red hot pokers in hell that you so richly deserve. God willing you'll have Ann's company there real soon.

Jerry Falwell Deceased; Tinky Winky Alive And *Wink* Still A Good Dresser

Details >>

The brief lives of the intolerant and ineloquently spiritual pass with much fanfare but little substance. My personal Criswell predicts that, decades from now, we will still honor progressive thinkers such as William James, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Irshad Manji, but will have relegated the likes of Falwell to the dutifully beskipped endnotes of religious history.

To quote the AP:

In 1999, he [Falwell] told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive.

Well, yes, whynot... And he lives in Clinton, NJ, and wears Pumas and loves sour cream. (Come on, Jerry, be specific. The shadow government you propped up through the Eighties didn't invest in that hope-powered JewFinder for nothing.)

In a statement, President Bush said he and First Lady Laura Bush were ''deeply saddened'' by the loss of a man who ''cherished faith, family and freedom.''

''One of his lasting contributions was the establishment of Liberty University, where he taught young people to remain true to their convictions and rely upon God's word throughout each stage of their lives,'' Bush said.

(The Reader ponders this latter nugget for herself.)

Goodnight, Mr. Falwell; we luminists and humanists and Sufis and hippies and mothers and siblings and average Joes bid you only the softest goodnight. And we hope you find yourself somewhere pleasant but challenging, or at least as challenging as fin-de-siecle America must have been for you. The secret of death is now in your hands. One only hopes you wield it with more grace than you so potently wielded your backward convictions in life.

Falwell is survived by his wife, Macel, two sons, and a daughter, Jeannie Falwell Savas. He was 73.

Overt Memetic Warfare

Well, the witches don't believe in you, Mr. President.

(Neither do Luminists such as myself, for that matter.)

In any event, we are heartened by the news that America's fastest-growing religion (don't believe Scientology's reports on itself, but look into CUNY's recent study of American faiths, and into this amazing book), Wicca, is now grave-safe, according to our ethics-meting G.I. spokespersons. Bravo, USofA. Bravo.

From the Times,"Use of Wiccan Symbol on Veterans’ Headstones Is Approved," by NEELA BANERJEE:

WASHINGTON, April 23 — To settle a lawsuit, the Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones.

The settlement, which was reached on Friday, was announced on Monday by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, which represented the plaintiffs in the case...

It normally takes a few months for a petition by a faith group to win the department’s approval, but the effort on behalf of the Wiccan symbol took about 10 years and a lawsuit, said Richard B. Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United.

The group attributed the delay to religious discrimination. Many Americans do not consider Wicca a religion, or hold the mistaken belief that Wiccans are devil worshipers.

“The Wiccan families we represented were in no way asking for special treatment,” the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said at a news conference Monday...

There are 1,800 Wiccans in the armed forces, according to a Pentagon survey cited in the suit, and Wiccans have their faith mentioned in official handbooks for military chaplains and noted on their dog tags...

In reviewing 30,000 pages of documents from Veterans Affairs, Americans United said, it found e-mail and memorandums referring to negative comments President Bush made about Wicca in an interview with “Good Morning America” in 1999, when he was governor of Texas. The interview had to do with a controversy at the time about Wiccan soldiers’ being allowed to worship at Fort Hood, Tex.

“I don’t think witchcraft is a religion,” Mr. Bush said at the time, according to a transcript. “I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made...”

“I was just aghast that someone who would fight for their country and die for their country would not get the symbol he wanted on his gravestone,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which litigates many First Amendment cases. “It’s just overt religious discrimination.”

(Holy) crap !!

This is sick.